Re: [Camelbones-devel] CBiPhone anyone?

[Terje B. <li...@po...>]

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she...@gm... (Sherm Pendley) wrote:

>Imagine a warehouse worker using a portable app that connects with DBI to
>the inventory database.

Oh I can imagine quite a bit more than that!

Working in Hospital IT, one thing I've learned is that Doctors 
absolutely *adore* portable gizmos. They also have an insane 
number of specialized applications they need to use. The drug 
interactions database, the patient demographic data (their name 
and such), diagnostic codes, etc. etc. All of these apps are 
things that Perl would excel at delivering, and the iPhone would 
be an excellent delivery vehicle for.

There's also the fact that your typical doctor has an average of 
5 doo-dahs he carries around. A pager, one or two cell phones, a 
DECT or similar phone, a PDA, etc.; they're much much worse then 
geeks in this regard. And the iPhone can replace an awful lot of 
those gizmos (by having both GSM and WLAN, and the ability to 
run a sane VoIP app).

If you add in the critical apps he wants, the iPhone is the 
answer to their prayers; Doctors will be buying these in droves.

Did you think it was a coincidence that Jobs' announcement 
highlighted a drug interactions app?


Now a lot of the medical apps are stuff like MRI, or CT etc. 
that require specialized workstations and huge screens. Or 
Electronic Health Record or Patient Administrative Systems that 
have so complex interfaces that they need a full desktop 
computer. But the stuff they need the most are the various 
databases where they look up drug interactions etc., which are 
perfect for Perl and the iPhone. These are usually a database 
somewhere. They're periodically updated from some central 
auuthority. They'll require some text munging, and some 
adaptability to survive each individual doctor's demands, and 
support a wide array of data sources (DBI, SOAP, screenscraping, etc.).

Were I in the states I'd seriously consider writing up a 
proposal for iFund for a startup to build this kind of stuff.


- -- 
   “I don't mind being thought of as a badguy,
    but it /really/ annoys me to be thought of
    as an *incompetent* badguy!” -- John Moreno

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